Television interview, ABC News Capital Hill with Henry Belot

E&OE transcript
Television interview
ABC News Capital Hill

HENRY BELOT: Australia will soon send troops to the UK to train Ukrainian forces in the latest effort to help the nation defend itself against Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion. The Defence Minister, Richard Marles, says Australia remains committed to supporting Ukraine.

RICHARD MARLES: We need to understand that what we're seeing now in Ukraine is largely a reservist force. That is everyday Ukrainians enlisting and signing up. So training is a really important issue here, that's infantry training that's going to be provided. The UK have stepped up in leading this initiative and we've had some conversations with the UK over a few weeks now around a contribution that we might make to that and obviously that's what our announcement is today and I've been in contact with the UK Defence Secretary overnight and they're very delighted that we will be participating in this. 

HENRY BELOT: Well, to get some more detail on this announcement, I spoke with the Defence Personnel and Veterans' Affairs Minister a short time ago. Matt Keogh, thank you for joining Capital Hill.

MATT KEOGH: Great to be with you.

HENRY BELOT: Tell us a little bit more about the 70 ADF personnel who are going to help with training. Where exactly are they going to be based and what will they be doing?

MATT KEOGH: So there will be up to 70 personnel that will be heading to the UK to help train the Ukraine forces. That's in addition to the new commitment of 30 additional Bushmasters that we'll be providing to the Ukraine, taking our commitment up to 90 Bushmaster vehicles. So the training will be provided in the UK. There's no Australian forces going into Ukraine but it's to make sure we're increasing and assisting them in developing their capabilities so that they can continue that push back against Russia in Ukraine.

HENRY BELOT: Are you able to explain what exactly they will be training and is it counter-productive to be take people away from Ukraine all the way to the UK when they're really involved in this fight on the front line?

MATT KEOGH: So I don't want to get into the detail of exactly what sort of training will be provided in the UK, but it's important to recognise, of course, as Western countries around the world have been supporting the Ukraine with additional equipment and arms, to make sure that they're well trained in how to use those because they're not all equipment that the Ukraine Defence Forces have necessarily had before this occasion. So to make sure they're best able to utilise those we do need to be able to provide that training to them.

Other countries are not putting forces into the field in the Ukraine so that training does have to happen outside of Ukraine. We're doing it through the UK, other countries are providing assistance as well, but as with any sort of conflict, it's important to make sure people are properly trained. You have to take them out of the field to do that and get them back in the field as quickly as possible.

HENRY BELOT: Okay, and why have we waited until now had to send those additional 30 Bushmasters? Wouldn't they have been very useful a couple of months ago?

MATT KEOGH: So we've been engaged with Ukraine for some time now about how we can best support their efforts in defending their national sovereignty and we've already provided 60 Bushmaster vehicles and what Ukraine has found, like many other countries that have used the Bushmaster vehicle, it's an exceptionally good vehicle at personnel protection, and so they have asked us for more and we're very happy to provide those additional vehicles. We've been continuing engaging with the Ukrainian Government about what their needs are and how we can best support that as their needs change and grow over time.

HENRY BELOT: Okay, I will turn to the Department of Veteran Affairs now. The budget had money for an additional 500 staff, I believe, to deal with a backlog in compensation claims. What is this going to do to the wait list? What's your target now to reduce that?

MATT KEOGH: Absolutely. So the budget that was delivered on Tuesday night was really about delivering on our commitment to serving personnel, veterans and families to deliver a better future for them and also responding to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and our response to its Interim Report. So these 500 additional staff are a really important way in which we can work through that backlog of some 40,000 plus cases that DVA needs to process through. We're trying to get that done by the end of next year, that's a bit ahead of time of where the Royal Commission has asked us to do. Obviously that may change as we see increases of claims over time, if that occurs. We're monitoring it very closely.

There's also money in the budget for better demand-driven profiling and modelling so we can best understand what that demand is over time so that we can make sure we do match resources in the department most appropriately to that demand.

HENRY BELOT: And when will those 500 staff be hired by you?

MATT KEOGH: So we've already started hiring additional staff in the department. It's really critical that we get that happening as quickly as possible. As every Australian knows, we're in a pretty constrained environment when it comes to hiring staff. But we're hopeful of having a big chunk of those online early next year and, of course, we have to train them as we go, but what's really important is we've moved away from having labour hire, which was so prevalent in the department, which robbed people of job security but it also meant you were continually losing trained staff and having to start again. So employing these staff in this way is really important. 

HENRY BELOT: Now just staying with recruitment and a slightly different focus, though. The Chief of Defence Force and the Defence Secretary recently wrote to staff saying that they needed to do more to retain staff. What are they failing at doing there? Why are they believing that they need to be more attractive?

MATT KEOGH: So we need to grow our defence force and our personnel are our most important capability. None of the rest of the equipment works without them. And so in part of growing that, we need to recruit more people and we need to retain staff that might be leaving. We've been doing a body of work around that and the Defence Force Chief and the Secretary have made some announcements about that just a few weeks ago.

The value proposition needs to be highlighted for people. There are things that are friction points for serving personnel in terms of not just themselves but their family, people have to be moved around country from time to time. Making sure we're better supporting their housing needs, their allowances are keeping pace with expectations, and making sure that we're being very clear to the Australian public the great things you can get out of serving our nation, the value that is there in serving our nation, not just in terms of your remuneration, which the overall package is very good - free health, free dental, free housing when you come into the service, support with that. We've just expanded housing support as part of the budget on Tuesday, making sure everyone's very clear about that but continually working with our serving personnel, and their families, to make sure we provide the best experience possible so we can keep them in service and the people that might be considering service know the great value that they will get out of joining our ADF.

HENRY BELOT: Are the improvements that you just canvassed there also a concession that you're failing to hit the recruitment targets that you've set out for the ADF?

MATT KEOGH: Yes, it's absolutely the case that what we confronted when we came into government only a few months ago was that the expansion necessary for our defence force was not being met. In fact, we saw some of the highest rates of people leaving our defence force at the time that we were coming into government. So we could see there's absolutely a body of work to be done there. We've just engaged a new partner for our recruiting work that we do and we made a number of announcements like expanding support for housing in the budget on Tuesday, we're working on veterans engagement employment program as well so people know if they join our defence force they're also supported when they decide to leave.

So there's a whole range of things that we're doing about making sure that people understand the value proposition, you know, not just in terms of remuneration but the great support they get when they come into Defence and that people are keen and eager to stay in Defence as well.

HENRY BELOT: And just finally, last question, there's been several reports of former Australian fighter pilots being recruited by China to help with their assistance. As Defence Personnel Minister, how concerning is that for you?

MATT KEOGH: I know there were reports around what was happening with the UK and what's happened there and we've been looking at whether that may be occurring here in Australia as well. Obviously we wouldn't want to see anyone that's ever served in our Defence Force joining forces that are not working in Australia's interests.

We obviously have exchange programs with our allies and friends and that's a really important part of how we develop our defence force. But we're always monitoring to make sure that when those sorts of things are not occurring and working with our partners as well to understand what might be occurring with their former serving personnel.

HENRY BELOT: Matt Keogh, thank you very much for your time.

END

Authorised by The Hon Matt Keogh MP

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608